Firefly's Personal Finance Blog

Working out my spending impulses.

About Me

Terri

I am 40, single, no kids. I am a health care professional. I feel that I'm generally a very good saver and a not so good budgeter - hence the credit card debt. Hopefully, I'll be able to work on the latter.

I am working on goal #3, but it's hard to pin down my monthly expenses. I am tracking on Mint.com, but my expenses seem to vary widely from month to month depending on what's going on. So I'm just averaging those expenses. I think $20,000 would be reasonable start to rebuild my emergency fund to, and I'm not far from that.

Goal #4 has not been completed at any time this year. Maybe next year.

I am working on goal #5 and with my employer's help, the graduate school loans will be paid off quicker.

My combined retirement accounts have totaled over six figures for some time now, but for the first time I had a single account that reached six figures. I've been waiting on that to happen, with the way the stock market has been rising in recent weeks. I'm pretty excited to be able to pull up an account and see six figures. I even printed it out so I could remember the day I first saw that. I'm pretty sure that the stock market will be rising and falling for some time, but it was exciting to see this morning.

I'm on vacation for the new few weeks. My last day at my job was Monday. I worked the holiday weekend. Four 12-hour shifts, 7p-7a. Now I'm on leave for several weeks, trying to use up my annual leave. I start my new job April 14th.

I'm not going anywhere special. I want to save money and do things here at home. I have several things on my to do list. I had my alarm system installed Monday. I feel much more secure after the break-ins in the community.

I've been working out more. My blood sugar is running a little high and with my extensive family history of diabetes I need to lose weight and exercise. I feel better already.

The next few months will be very frutiful for me financially. I have a surplus on my graduate school account and it will disbursed to me next month. The economic stimulus will be in the mail in May.

Leaving my old job I will get paid approximately 500 in annual and compensatory leave. I wiil have that amount contributed to my 403(b). I also have my 457(b) to contribute. It's nice having both plans and being able to contribute $31,000 a year. With the federal government I'll be getting a 5% match on my contributions as well. I'm feeling very blessed.

So how are you coming along on your new goals for 2008? I'm doing well so far. I updated my Roth contributions and the first increased contribution went out on the 15th. My 457 contributions have remained steady until I hopefully get a new job, and a raise. I opened a CD on the 5th as part of my emergency fund. I haven't received any tax forms yet. I'm waiting on receiving my tax refund to pay off my credit cards. So far, so good.

Contribute $245 to my three accounts. My goal is $15,000 in 3 years, my current balance is just over$5,000.

DEBT:

I have about $2,000 on a credit card. I will contribute $500 plus the amount of my monthly purchases every payment.

My original Sallie Mae loan is now at $300. With automatic payments my loan will be paid off in about 4 months. My grad school loans will begin repayment 6 months after my December 2008 graduation.

My car payment will be $326. After finishing with the credit card balance I will contribute the extra to the car payment.

RETIREMENT:

Continue contributing $400 biweekly to my 457. That is an annual contribution of $10,400.

Continue to fund my Roth IRA to the maximum. That will be $5,000 in 2008.

HOUSE:

My payments are $313 biweekly. I occasionally get a few pennies interest from a savings account and will transfer to principal. Otherwise, my payments will continue as is for this category. I'm more focused on the other debt.

CAREER AND SCHOOL:

In somewhat related plans, I want to focus on school and looking for a new job. I'm off this week since I worked the holiday (12 hour shifts for 4 days) and I'm writing papers and taking civil service tests.

The lady asked why I wanted to take the test again since I scored so well. I told her that I wanted an 80 on the test. I scored a 74. She said that few people score so well and I must be a perfectionist. I'm not. What I am is really motivated to move on to a better position.

I took another test since it hadn't been 28 days since I took the one that I wanted to retest on. Next time I'll take a different one again. I'll keep taking them until I'm where I want to be.

I've decided to stop contributing to my 403(b) and just contribute to my 457(b). It's nothing that ING did, but I just decided that it's better to streamline things. I think I have better expense ratios with my 457(b) as well. I hope that they allow me to do a direct rollover to my 457(b) even though I'm still employed.

Yes, I found out something good about my 457(b) just now. I noticed on the salary deferral agree that there is now an option to take 300 hours of annual leave as a lump sum payment to your 457(b) when leaving state employment. This is as long as you haven't met your maximum for the year. I hope that this is in addition to the 300 hours leave that you are paid when leaving state employment, but I'd rather put it in the 457(b) than cash out if not. I now have over 600 hours so this would help me not lose some hours if I can take both. Not that I'm planning to leave state employment right now, but in the future I may be.